Sports Reference Blog

Basketball Reference has added awards voting data for many WNBA awards to its database. This information can be accessed via the pages for individual awards and clicking a link for full voting. For instance, our page of WNBA MVPs has a 'voting' column where you can see every player who received votes for various awards in that season. Here, for instance, are the 2022 WNBA awards votes. This information goes all the way back to the league's inaugural season in 1997. Read the rest of this entry

When we re-launched Immaculate Grid under the Sports Reference umbrella, we completely changed the underlying data source for the game. A few small changes were made when updating this API, one of them being that rate stats (such as batting average) would require qualification for the batting title.

Made sense, right? When people talk about (or used to talk about) player’s past batting averages they often do so in the context of the batting title. And to get a batting title, you need to qualify. Qualification means you need at least 3.1 plate appearances per team game (which comes out to 502 plate appearances per 162 game season).

But Immaculate Grid is different. When some people see “.300 Batting Average Season” they think of players like Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs, Albert Pujols, or Ichiro. But more than a few of you enjoyed playing with former “.300 hitters” like 1930s pitcher Wes Ferrell (a .300 hitter three times, never in more than 179 times up), infielder Jeff Treadway (.320 in 336 plate appearances in 1991), or even Jacob deGrom (.364 in 33 PA in 2021).

Part of the fun of Immaculate Grid is pulling those really unique (or “sicko”) names out of your head and the leaderboard requirements made that a little harder. So we’ve removed them starting today. Go forth and use your Ferrells, Treadways, and deGroms as .300 hitters. I know I’ll be waiting to use John Paciorek.

In April, May, and June, we launched the Versus Finder on Stathead for Hockey, Basketball, and Football. Last but not least, we’re excited to announce that we’ve launched the Versus Finder on Stathead Baseball!

The Baseball Versus Finder has many of the same powerful tools as the Versus Finders across our other Stathead sports, as well as a couple of new ones that are specific to baseball. Here’s a primer on what it offers and how to use it.

Read the rest of this entry

This summer, Sports Reference has added Becky Ligon (Test Engineer) and Kyle Brown (Community Marketing Coordinator), bringing the full-time staff size to 33. Welcome Becky and Kyle! Here's some more about our new teammates:

Becky Ligon, Test Engineer, joined Sports Reference in the middle of 2023. Becky previously worked as a technical business analyst and performance/automated test engineer in the wholesale industry. She is a Virginia native and loves playing volleyball and watching soccer, hockey, and college football.

Kyle Brown, Community Marketing Coordinator, joined Sports Reference in the middle of 2023. He has worked at sports media companies such as Bleacher Report and The Athletic. He calls the Bay Area home, but currently lives in Southern California. He is a fan of the San Francisco Giants and 49ers, Warriors, Oregon Ducks, and literally anything that Steph Curry does.

We are proud to announce that Immaculate Grid now includes hockey! Alongside baseball, football and basketball, you can now test your hockey knowledge daily. New grids launch at 9am ET.

Integrating into Hockey-Reference.com and Stathead, Immaculate Grid Hockey will include the same great features: hyperlinked player pages, possible answers for each cell, most popular answers, accuracy, rarity score, and player scores.

Play now at immaculategrid.com/hockey.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of the fine folks over at the SABR Biographical Research Committee, we have recently made some biographical updates to players on Baseball Reference. Most of the changes are added birthplaces, birth locations and deaths. A few of the updates feature changes to player names and/or moving statistics from one player record to another. Some highlights:

• A player who made one appearance for the 1889 Louisville Colonels of the American Association has been identified as Walter Fisher. He was previously listed as Charles Fisher due to some confusion in contemporary newspapers. Thank you to Justin McKinney for tracking down this correction.
• A player who played two games for the 1884 Washington Nationals of the Union Association has been identified as George Pierce. He was previously believed to be Maurice Pierce.
• A player who played six games for the 1884 St. Paul White Caps of the Union Association has been identified as Ed Brown, who previously played for the St. Louis Brown Stockings and the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association. This record has previously been associated with Jim Brown, who pitched for Altoona Mountain City (UA), New York Gothams (NL) and Philadelphia Athletics (AA).
• A player for the 1875 Brooklyn Atlantics who was previously identified as Thomas N. Smith is now identified as D. Smith.

You can now play Immaculate Grid Basketball, along with your other favorites like baseball and football! In an effort to bring you all of the sports you love, we're proud to introduce the newest sport to the Immaculate Grid suite of games. New basketball grids will launch every day at 9am ET.

WNBA Grid update: The Sports Reference team is taking some additional time before launching a women's basketball grid. Our goal is to to make sure we do it right. Due to the relatively small number of teams and the short history of the league, there are some unique challenges to overcome ahead of a launch. If you have feedback or ideas, please share them with us here.

Reminder: Starting July 26th, new baseball grids will launch at 9am ET rather than the original time of 12am ET. Learn more about the change here.

We have expanded our newly acquired trivia game, Immaculate Grid, to include professional football! You can now play the viral sports trivia game for both baseball and football with more sports coming soon. New football grids will launch daily at 9am ET.

Integrating into Pro-Football-Reference.com and Stathead, Immaculate Grid Football will include the same features as baseball grids: hyperlinked player pages, possible answers for each cell, most popular answers, accuracy, rarity score, and player scores.

Test your football knowledge now at immaculategrid.com/football.

Programming Note - New Grid Launch Timing Starting Wednesday, July 26th, 2023.

Starting 7/26/23, new Immaculate Grid games for existing sports will launch at 9am ET. In order to provide the most reliable and supported experience for our users as we expand to multiple sports, this time change will allow the Sports Reference team more flexibility to respond to issues and feedback in a timely manner. It also allows us to stop pulling all nighters :)

Questions about any of the above? Contact us at here.

We're excited to announce that we've brought one of the most commonly requested features to Stathead! All Team Game Finders on all sports now have filters for scoring and margin by quarter/inning/period. Read the rest of this entry

Exciting news from your friends at Stathead! We've rolled out a new set of filters to the Season Finders on all of our sports. These filters allow you to explore the history of the draft in some exciting new ways! Read the rest of this entry